Noncommuting electric fields and algebraic consistency in noncommutative gauge theories

We show that noncommuting electric fields occur naturally in theta-expanded noncommutative gauge theories. Using this noncommutativity, which is field dependent, and a Hamiltonian generalization of the Seiberg-Witten map, the algebraic consistency in the Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of these theories is established. A comparison of results in different descriptions shows that this generalized map acts as a canonical transformation in the physical subspace only. Finally, we apply the Hamiltonian formulation to derive the gauge symmetries of the action.